


The Pulse

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-23
Updated: 2010-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 20:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder, every instant." - Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pulse

  
"What did you see," Sam asks, "in the nest, what did you see?"

Everything is too loud. He can _hear_. Dean realizes that, before, as a human, he had been deaf – this is hearing. This is hearing what the neighbors two doors over are watching on their shitty motel television. This is hearing the night manager flipping idly through the pages of a magazine out in the front hall. This is hearing the traffic speeding by outside, except it isn't just _outside_ , it's two whole blocks down the road.

The clock is ticking. Dean hates it. He hates it more than he hates Sam asking him _what did you see_.

"I can't," he says, because Sam's heart is a steady _thu-thud_ and the clock is a mechanical _tick_ and the television is too loud, the sound of the magazine's pages turning, the traffic, the people walking out in the hall, the people walking _outside_ , it's all too much, and Dean grabs for the clock, because it's closest, because it's better than grabbing _Sam_ , and he brings his fist down on it in one swift, crunching motion.

It shatters underneath his hand, and Dean realizes that he wouldn't have been able to do that, before. He looks at his curled fist, at the slivers of glass and plastic sticking out of his skin. There's no blood. He slowly picks the shards out of his skin, and the wounds flow together without leaving a scar.

"Dean?"

"I can't," he repeats. And then, "I can hear your heart beating. It's awfully fucking steady, considering…what I am."

He wants to freak out. He wants to scream and throw things and _hit_ someone. But he's worried that, if he does, he'll lose control.

"I'm just trying to…remain calm about the whole thing."

"Uh huh."

"I called Samuel."

Dean closes his eyes. _Thu-thud. Thu-thud._ "Good. Someone needs to kill me, and it sure as hell isn't gonna be you."

"That's not why I called him. He'll know a way to fix this."

"Sure, because there's a way to _fix_ vampirism."

Sam sounds so confident. Dean wants to believe him, he really does…but experience has taught him how to recognize lost causes.

And recent events have given him reason to not believe Sam, anyways. At least, not all the time.

 _Thu-thump. Thu-thump_. And the sound isn't alone, anymore – beneath the noise of traffic and television and machinery, beneath the pound of footsteps outside, beneath the steady beat of Sam's heart, there's a soft, rushing sound, like wind or running water.

Dean feels something inside him _lurch_ , an animal straining against a leash, and suddenly his mouth feels too small, too weak – he can't do _anything_ with this tiny jaw, these grinding teeth, not if he wants to…

Dean turns his head away, facing the wall, and raises his hand to cover his mouth. He imagines he can feel smooth enamel pressing against his fingers, like his mouth is overflowing with needles.

 _Oh God,_ he thinks, but that doesn't even began to encompass it. _Oh God_ is for when you learn your grandmother has died. When you're told you've been given a promotion. When someone startles you. This goes so far beyond God that Dean is terrified. Of himself, of what he might do.

Of Sam. _For_ Sam.

"Please tell me Samuel is gonna get here soon." His voice is slurred with some distant, gnawing hunger, growing closer by the minute. Dean is horrified. He wishes it were possible to cut off your own head. He'd do it in a heartbeat. There's a horrible pressure behind his eyes, like the beginnings of a headache but sharper, clearer. It's like hunger pangs in his brain.

 _Thu-thump_.

 _Oh God._

"Not for another hour or so."

"I need to go." He swallows against the feel of needles in his mouth, thinks about things that have yet to be tainted with blood – the toy soldiers he'd played with as a kid, he'd been so _careful_ about not letting them get covered in blood or gore. Elementary school, first grade, the book loft where Mrs. Darleen had put all the books and the blankets and the pillows, and Dean had always had the place to himself because, contrary to what Sam grew up believing, once upon a time Dean _loved_ books. Books allowed him to pretend that his father didn't hunt monsters. Allowed him to pretend that John Winchester never came back to their motel covered in ash and smelling like smoke and whiskey.

And then Dean had embraced the lifestyle, so the books had become a moot point. But, for the time, they had been his best friends. He'd read to Sam every single day.

"If you go, you'll end up hurting yourself. Or someone else. You can't leave."

He knows. He knows, he knows, because his first instinct is to go to Lisa and apologize. Tell her that he's sorry it's going to end this way, but please tell Ben that all Dean ever wanted was to be a good father, all he ever wanted was to have a family that _wasn't_ totally fucked up in the head.

That's a lie. All he'd ever wanted was _Sam_ , he'd wanted his brother _back_ , but a non-fucked-up family is close enough for government work. And he did love them. He _did_. Ben is his _kid_.

But there's always been a difference between what you love and what you want. What you need.

Dean swallows, and his throat feels like it's lined with sandpaper. Objectively, he's interested to note that vampires don't feel the bloodlust like it's a _thirst_. It's more like craving a steak. The biggest, rarest stake possible. Like, somehow, the blood fills some substantial, _physical_ need, rather than a supernatural one.

"You should tie me up," he says, and once, Sam would have made a joke about that, or else he would have looked sadly at Dean, if he thought that it wasn't necessary. He would have sighed and tried to figure out another way.

This Sam, this Sam that came back from the Pit, irrevocably changed but still, supposedly, his brother…this Sam only nods, and then pulls his duffel out from under the bed and retrieves a length of nylon cord.

Dean doesn't like being tied up. Sam knows this, and Dean is stupidly grateful when he realizes that Sam's being deft, but gentle, as he ties Dean's wrists to the bedposts. He's so warm. Logically, Dean realizes that vampires aren't undead – they're living creatures, the same as humans – but there's still a part of him that's always believed they must be cold, and he's surprised when Sam touches his wrist and doesn't immediately shy away.

"Remember the last time we did this?" Sam asks, and Dean turns his head towards the pillow, not really _wanting_ to remember, because that had been the day that…

"I kicked you in the face," Dean says quietly. "Broke your nose." There had been blood everywhere. The face is one of the most vascular parts of the human body – the veins there are thin and small, but they bleed freely when you actually get at them.

Fuck.

 _Oh God_.

"You set it, though." Sam touches the curve of Dean's clenched fist. It's too soft. Dean's head feels thick with hunger. "So no hard feelings."

"I told you I wasn't into that sort of thing."

Sam smiles. "I thought maybe you just hadn't tried it."

"Yeah, well, you were wrong. And nothing's changed." Dean tugs at the knots that Sam has tied – they hold fast. Sam's always been good at tying knots. "Now go…I don't know, go get dinner or something." _Thu-thump_. "I'll be all right."

"I'm not going anywhere."

" _Damnit_ , Sammy! _Go_. Before I try to do something I'll regret."

He feels heavy. It isn't a human heaviness, like the weight of sleep – it's something that starts in the center of his brain and moves down his skull like an oil slick, congealing in his mouth and then extending itself towards his stomach.

Dean is thankful that his face is turned _away_ from Sam when the fangs drop for the first time.

He isn't sure what he was expecting it to feel like – losing a tooth, maybe, except that isn't what it's like at all. It isn't like having an infection and squeezing the pus out, that brief, intense relief of knowing that whatever was _wrong_ with you is gone now. It's more like he's been carrying a heavy stone his entire life, and now he's finally been allowed to set it down.

He almost wants to touch them. Almost.

 _Thu-thump_. That sound shouldn't be getting closer. Shouldn't be getting louder and more tempting. But it is, and Dean can only keep his head turned and his eyes closed as Sam's fingers touch his lips, then gently pry them apart to reach the fangs.

It doesn't feel like Sam is touching Dean's teeth – it feels like he's touching Dean's hand, or his arm. Dean can _feel_ it reverberating through him. It's not dead tissue that Sam is touching, but something electric and alive. Dean wonders if vampires can throw up. He feels sick to his stomach.

He feels horny as hell.

"Stop," he says, and Sam's fingertips move against his fangs, careful to steer clear of the sharp tips. All that blood, and it's so _close_. If he just…bit down…

"I trust you," Sam whispers. He sounds…fascinated. The way he used to sound when he was researching something new and exciting, but now that clinical interest is turned onto Dean, and he desperately wants to say, _but I don't trust you_. But he doesn't.

Instead, he says, "I don't trust _myself_." Which is also true. The fangs make it difficult to talk. He's suddenly worried about cutting his own mouth – for some reason, the thought it almost as horrifying as the thought of hurting someone else.

Sam's other hand touches the curve of Dean's neck. Dean can feel the pulse beating in Sam's fingers.

 _God,_ he thinks, and then remembers that _Oh God_ doesn't apply to this, and anyways, God is gone. And probably not coming back.

"I could," Sam says, and then he trails off, but Dean can finish the sentence in his head, because Sam had said it so many times on the days when he couldn't hunt, when Dean came back to the motel by himself, and Sam had crawled into bed with him and he'd said, _I could, I could touch you, Dean, I could blow you, I could let you fuck me or I could fuck you, either way, I like both because I love you, Dean, I'll always love you and I could, I could_.

"Everything's changed," Dean says. "You can't."

"That's not true."

"Don't talk to me about truth, Sam."

There's a soft sound, like skin pressing together, an indenting sound, and Dean realizes that it's Sam, biting his lip, probably looking earnest, too, except there's something off about it, now. Something being held back.

"Lisa and Ben aren't here."

"Fuck you, if you think that's the _only_ reason I'm saying no. I'm talking about _you_. You've changed and you won't tell me why."

"Nothing to tell."

"Bullshit."

Slowly, Sam's fingers retreat from Dean's mouth. He breathes a sigh of relief, and, a moment later, the fangs recede. It feels ten times stranger than when they dropped, and suddenly Dean is picking up that stone again, the weight is bearing down on him again, and he's still so hungry.

He has to see Lisa. He has to apologize. He has to tell Ben that, when he grows up, he has to be a good father, because Dean never managed it. He's going to die soon, and he's never managed to be the father he wanted when he was a kid.

It's the only thing he needs to do. If he sees Lisa one last time, if he sees Ben, if he can tell them he's sorry, he'll be able to die…maybe not happy, but at least at peace.

 _Now who isn't telling the truth_.

There's a window in the bathroom.

"I'll call Samuel again," Sam says. "See how far away he is."

"Untie me first." Sam glances at him, an eyebrow raised. "Newsflash, Sam, vampires pee."

No one knows very much about vampire physiology. A lot of hunters think that vampires are cold-blooded, like lizards. That they can live underwater indefinitely. They think vampires don't breathe the way humans do.

Dean inhales deeply when Sam leans forward and works the knots around Dean's wrists loose. He smells like cheap diner food and motel sheets and the warm rush of blood. Dean wants him. Wants him in every way possible.

"Five minutes," Sam says.

Five minutes is enough. Dean rubs his wrists, and he slips into the bathroom when Sam turns around and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. He hears Sam's fingers (those fingers that had so recently been on _Dean_ ) punch in the number, hears the phone ring.

He wonders if Sam will kiss him, before he dies. Probably not in front of Samuel. Probably.

But, then again, this new Sam is strange, and unpredictable. Maybe, maybe.

He runs the taps, because Sam's hearing isn't as good as his, but it's still pretty damn good. Then he pulls open the window, and listens to the sound of traffic, and footsteps, and television, radios, airplanes, people talking and laughing and screaming and…

He sways towards the open window, and puts his hands on the sill.

There's a knock at the bathroom door. "Dean?"

The running water. Sam's breathing. _Thu-thump. Thu-thump_. His heart rate doesn't speed up. Not at all.

"Oh God," Sam says, and starts turning the doorknob.

 _God's been gone a long time,_ Dean thinks.

He hoists himself up, slips through the window and outside, out into the cold night air and the smell of people and machinery, and the sound of civilization, and behind him he hears Sam's heart lurch, once, as if in fear, when he finds the bathroom empty, the taps running, and the night encroaching on the motel room through the open window.


End file.
